Lawton: Nearby Farms Are Killing The St. Johns

The Orlando Sentinel: How many of the St. Johns River's environmental problems can be blamed on farms lining the river?

Tom Lawton: In the headwaters from State Road 520 south, with some exceptions, they are the total problem because they are the only thing out there.

Q: Are farms causing a health problem by discharging wastewater into a river where 100,000 people get their drinking water?

A: I have no basis for saying they are or aren't, other than the fact that Lake Washington is a long way from where the farms discharge. I don't think there has been any indication of a type of sickness in the area.

Q: The $111 million restoration and flood control plan for the St. Johns River calls for building two reservoirs to hold agricultural water. Should this be at public expense as planned?

A: There will be 15,000 acres of public land that's going to be dedicated strictly to agriculture runoff. When it first was proposed, I thought that the St. Johns River Water Management district should determine who benefits from those reservoirs.

If I benefit 50 percent, then I would be willing to pay 50 percent of the cost of buying the land and setting it aside. If agriculture benefited the other 50 percent, then they ought to pay that. I still feel that that's the way it should be. If DER really wanted to get tough with farmers, they would be required to hold the water on their own property.

Q: Are the farmers getting a free ride in the plan?

A: I would say yes. I buy my drinking water and I pay for someone to take my sewage and process it. When a farmer pulls the public water in, uses it and discharges it back into the public area with no cost, I'd say yes, he's getting a free ride.

I look for the day when the farms are going to have to discharge water that meets state quality standards. That's going to be costly for them. They are either going to have to do that or they are going to have to pay the public to do it for them.

Q: Has the Florida Department of Environmental Regulation and the St. Johns River Water Management District been lax in enforcing regulations against the farmers?

A: No, I don't believe they have. DER doesn't have the manpower. When you have a fish kill it's difficult to determine whether the water that the farmers pumped is killing them or whether the kill is a normal function of a marsh system.

I think the only area we're getting toxic type material as well as water with low oxygen probably is from farms in Indian River County. After the last major fish kill the DER took a tough course and now has decided to plug drainage canals so water will flow through the marshes.

Q: Will the restoration and flood-control project help south Brevard get more water from the St. Johns for drinking supplies?

A: I've got my doubts. I think that we are moving at a good pace in the right direction. I think that if we don't have enough water, I think the whole concept of water usage is going to be a continuing subject that the state has to get deeper and deeper into.

I think that agriculture is going to be required to hold water on their own property and reuse it and reuse it and reuse it. And I'm looking at the day that we're going to be piping our treated sewage effluent down to a holding area and it's going to be water that's going to meet the requirements of agriculture and it's going to be blessed water -- they're going to be thankful for it.

Q: A lot of people are saying that south Brevard caused its own problems by sticking with Lake Washington as a source of its drinking water. Should south Brevard even be using Lake Washington?

A: It's probably one of the most vulnerable water supply sources for people to be totally dependent upon in the state of Florida. Nobody knows what goes into it. The pesticides that had to be put in there to kill the hydrilla and the hyacinths -- nobody knows, particularly in the hydrilla area, what really is appropriate in a potable water supply system and particularly in a moving water supply system. It is a terrible body of water to treat for drinking. It's loaded with organics.

Q: What should the water management districts do about it?

A: They would find it very beneficial to get out of Lake Washington as a primary water source. Now when the St. Johns approaches a problem in the upper basin, they have to approach it as a drinking water supply primarily, and a river system secondarily. When we get another source of water -- which would be well fields to the west of Melbourne -- then if the water level is low or there's a treatment problem or whatever, they can shut it off and depend entirely on well water. They can treat the upper basin as a river system primarily and secondarily as a backup source of water for drinking.

That's going to make a lot of difference in the way the river is handled. We've got a dam north of Lake Washington that dries up the blooming river like a chalk bed all the way to Lake Winder. When we get another source of water, then we can make sure that minimum flows are maintained in that river.

Q: Will the upper basin plan make for more and better drinking water in Melbourne?

A: No. I don't think it's going to have any effect on it whatsoever. I believe that when you open up the marsh from 1 mile to say 4 1/2 miles wide, which is what we're going to do, that it will cut the peak of highs and lows and flatten it out some, but I really doubt seriously if we're going to get as much water from that section into Lake Washington as we had before. When you wet down that much more marsh I just don't think you're going to get that much more water. I think you'll get even less water than you have been. There won't be any difference in quality whatsoever.